Tips & tricks for printed vinyl on both side of an acrylic!

[David Wilde]

Never heard of this before? Be interested to see how many on here have use this method.

We’ve never really had an issue with vibrancy though, we use Opal Perspex and Translucent back-lit vinyl printed on the correct profile for the vinyl (which usually is the highest quality/longest print time).

Have to say I’d be concerned about doing a double layer though.

[Erdy Cem]

I was advised by another sign guy some time ago..

Reason being, I’m never happy with the print on backlit vinyl when it’s illuminated. We’ve got HP latex, and we print on a proper backlit vinyl with correct profile on opal perspex.

but once it’s lit, it looks faded, not enough vibrant.

So I thought if we could do double print then it can be better.. But I don’t know if it’s possible without having it double layer..

[Joe Killeen]

In over 35 years making and fitting signs I have never seen a lightbox panel finished on both sides, clear panel with reverse side image or opal with forward image.

Try printing onto clear vinyl and mounting to opal.

Why do both sides? twice the work and extra material cost.

[Erdy Cem]

Thanks Joe..

We jumped into digital printing a few years ago from making channel letters only.. We’ve got long way to learn about printing..

Don’t you think clear vinyl will be worse than backlit vinyl on illuminated opal?

[David McDonald]

Hi Erdy

We’ve done this once and it wasn’t a huge improvement – we included reg marks to align to the 4 corners of the Opal acrylic so was very simple to get registration both sides. We just created a high pass, high saturation profile and it works well HP560 with Metamark MDT600. I suppose it depends on the design but we’ve been happy and customers have been happy staying single sided since

Cheers

Dave

[Erdy Cem]

Thanks David.. I used Metamark MDT600 too with supplied profile. Do you mean that you edited the profile to do high pass and more inks?

I’ll try that.

[David Hammond]

As David said, if we were to do that, we’d use crop or regmarks and align it to a precut sheet.

But why?

Opal acrylic will diffuse the light. Double pass on clear works, we’ve done that save buying in a roll of translucent film for what bits we do. All the RIPs we’ve used have had a clear profile.

If I was doing this kind of work regularly, translucent vinyl, and print normally.

[Jamie Wood]

As David says, you need to double strike the ink on backlit, to get the vibrancy when lit.

[David McDonald]

Hi Erdy

Off hand I can’t remember the exact settings, possibly 12-pass with 170 / 180 ink and highest curing temp.

It’s looks better on the MDT600 than on clear

Cheers

Dave